How Globalization Invented Indians in the Caribbean

How Globalization Invented Indians in the Caribbean

Patricia Seed

Publisher:

Liverpool University Press

DOI:10.5949/liverpool/9781781381519.003.0002

This chapter focuses on the emergence of globalization as an economic and political system in the Caribbean. It revisits the time when Christopher Columbus almost stumbled upon the islands of the Caribbean on his way to Asia in 1492 and the chain reaction that he accidentally set in motion. It describes the rapid development of economic interventions into the native world, pulling natives willingly or unwillingly into interactions with a global economy with fledgling principles. It examines how Spaniards at all levels came to view the indigenous population in terms of categories imported from that global economy. With particular reference to Spanish activity in the region, the chapter argues that globalization may have invented the ‘Indians’. Finally, it considers how the broader economic significance of the global incorporation of the Caribbean gave rise to the market theory of value.

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